this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
-7 points (36.0% liked)

Europe

1583 readers
393 users here now

News and information from Europe ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in !yurop@lemm.ee. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)

(This list may get expanded when necessary.)

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @federalreverse@feddit.org, @poVoq@slrpnk.net, or @anzo@programming.dev.

founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] atro_city@fedia.io 9 points 3 months ago

Facts are good, but I'm saying he missed an important aspect which colored his final opinion on the subject. He bifurcated it to either you have

  • social cohesion, less growth, and less immigrants
  • less social cohesion, more growth, and more immigrants

And as usual in life, there aren't only 2 options. He completely missed the reason why low skilled workers are migrating. Reasons include: we extract wealth from their countries and let our companies run rampant there, we fight our proxy wars and trade wars there, our pollution is causing the climate to change so much there that it's becoming much less livable - and that's not "it happened centuries ago", it's going on right now.

Again, IMO, the biggest reason immigration isn't "saving" Europe's economy is because of shitty integration. Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands supposedly have the best "integration models", but that's completely relative, because actually they all suck. They're just better than the rest of Europe, which suck more.

Wat do?

Bind social welfare to education progress: you do badly at speaking the language and are not willing to learn --> less money. But that also means qualified teachers should be provided or trained that treat them with respect. Also, it shouldn't cost a fortune for low-skilled immigrants to get language courses. Germany is good in this regard because they are freely available by public institutions and German TV is freely available without DRM. Denmark has the downside of having a terrible language, but the courses are free for low-skilled immigrants, high-skilled immigrants don't even have to bother learning if they speak English - which isn't good either. And the Danish courses are expensive af for high-skilled immigrants. The Netherlands is just a complete fucking mess, so let's not get into that.

Then, don't put low-skilled immigrants in low-income neighborhoods, far away from amenities, where there are less opportunities to find jobs, public transport is worse, and they cannot integrate. Of course they won't learn the language as quickly, their kids will go to worse schools, hang out with the wrong people, and worse. It's something that's been known for decades and yet the same old policies still apply.

Want to lower the number of low-skilled immigrants? Invest in the communities abroad where these refugees and low-skilled workers are coming from. They won't have to emigrate if there's nothing to escape from or if they like it there more than here. Or invest in the people that immigrated. Remittance is a large part of what they do to help out the families abroad, which partially addresses the problem too.

And of course, make your own damn country better for low-skilled, low-wage domestics. There's no "wage war" with low-skilled immigrants if you have a highly educated and capable domestic work-force. Invest in your own citizens. Raise the minimum wage and make education one the biggest expenditures. Teacher should be paid wages of engineers and managers and CEOs. A good teacher can provide way more to the economy in terms of workpower than a company. Companies depend on skilled workers. It makes absolutely no sense to reduce the wages and worsen the working conditions of those that teach them those skills. It's idiotic beyond belief.


It would've made his video longer or he could've teased with: "but there is one important aspect I didn't talk about: why do we have immigrants in the first place?" or something like that.

Again, facts are good, context is also very important. I could tell you right now that some viruses are made in a lab, but if I don't answer "why", well... you see what happens.